The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee

So, r/fantasy has not steered me wrong yet and I ordered the first book in the Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee, Jade City, without really knowing anything about the book.  I got it from the library on a Thursday, started reading it on Friday afternoon, and basically spent the weekend avoiding chores so I could spend time with my book.

In this book, we follow the Kaul family, one of two major crime syndicates that rule the island of Kekon. Kekon is the only place in the world in which a magical form of jade gives particular individuals special powers is found.  So what we have here is The Godfather with kung fu and business/political meetings about cartels and it's absolutely amazing. I often find "urban fantasy" too gritty for me and there's plenty of grit here, what with the turf war between the No Peaks that the Kaul family runs and the Mountain clans, but there's also family and a tiny bit of romance.  It's also quite violent at times, so that's something to know going in.

The worldbuilding is wonderful (jade is magic! there are magic schools of higher education!), the introduction of characters is done skillfully, and I just want more of this world. Fortunately for me, this is just the first in a trilogy, so I am excited to dive in for more.

5/5 stars

Up next is Jade War, in which the Kaul family is still trying to fight for control of Kekon over the pesky Mountain clan. Babies are born, people are killed, and jade smuggling is a huge problem. Meanwhile, outside of Kekon's borders, war is booming and who the Kaul family makes alliances with could be the difference between life and death. 

Among the main players are Hilo Kaul, the head of No Peaks and his wife Wen who is ostensibly a stone-eye, someone who isn't impacted by the magical powers of jade, but who is secretly during covert work for Hilo's sister Shae who is business manager of No Peaks. Meanwhile, Shae is involved in one terrible romantic endeavor after another, but she manages to keep the family's finances afloat. Anden, Shae and Hilo's adopted brother/cousin/the relationship is murky, has been exiled to help the family in a foreign country. Whew. If you're caught up on all that, just wait until you hear about how the kid who killed Hilo and Shae's older brother is somehow still alive and even working for the clan now. 

I have been constantly surprised at how page turning these books are. I really want to know how all this is going to work out.  Will the clans continue to be able to control the jade trade? Will Wen and Hilo's children manage to live to adulthood? Will Shae and Anden ever be able to have romantic relationships that don't get bogged down in clan business?  

It's violent, it's gritty, but it's also really wonderful.  5/5 stars

Lines of note (chapter 30 spoke to me):

"If it were me, I'd like another woman to be with me," Wen said. "Why should we have to go through hardships in life by ourselves?" (page 281)

I love this. Women supporting women in fiction is always worth pointing out.

"I've been called unlucky my whole life. I'm not afraid of bad luck any more than a bird would be afraid of feathers." (page 282)

Ha! This made me laugh.

"We're always alone with our own decisions." (page 284)

Isn't this the truth?

This trilogy finishes up with the absolute brilliant Jade Legacy. I rarely vocalize when I read, but I gasped, laughed, said "oh shit," and at one point actually was reading with my hand over my eyes, peeking through my fingers because I wasn't sure if I wanted to read what was on the page. This is the novel equivalent of a soap opera with every chapter ending on a cliffhanger and me devouring every page, desperate to know what was going to happen to the Kaul family. 

There are some legitimate criticisms of this book. It's over 700 pages and might have been better served to be two books, the female characters in the family who played pivotal roles in the second book become little more than set dressing in this one, and (spoiler) a dog died, but I will not hear any of these criticisms. This book kept me on my toes, kept me entertained, and made me laugh, cry, and audibly vocalize my amazement at some of the choices the author made. I started reading this giant tome on a Friday afternoon and finished it before I made dinner on Sunday night. That's how propulsive this was.

Lee isn't afraid to be mean to characters, but it doesn't seem like she's doing it in a way that's not believable to the world. And in the end, the female characters are the ones who really make the most impact on the story and that cannot be undersold. Lee's ability to develop characters that you care about, even the villains, is one of the things I most appreciated about this series.

There's family intrigue, political drama, and (admittedly subpar) romance. There's magic, there's talk of passage of legislation, and there are maps. There's action, multi-generation tension, twenty years of history, and worldbuilding to the max. 

Look, I think this is the best book I've read in years and I think the overall series is excellent. It's up there with Realm of the Elderlings and Wayfarers for me.   I saw a Goodreads review that said something like "this series has now become my personality" and I sort of feel that way, too. I will forever gush about how amazing this is. 

Just brilliant.

5/5 stars

Lines of note:

"And it's not always that people are bad in their hearts so much as bad in their decisions." (page 137)

My brother-in-law is a city attorney and he frequently has to tell his children that the people he prosecutes aren't bad people, just adults who made bad decisions. This is the second time I've told this story on this blog because I guess this theme comes up a lot in fiction. Anyway, we all make poor decisions.

"Fate makes assignments in the clan as much as merit does." (page 152)

Luck plays a role in everything we do.

"...just because it's an unsurprising problem doesn't mean it's not still a problem." (page 325)

Don't I feel this right now?

She pretended to struggle with Espenian [a language], to not understand all of the things he spoke of, so that he talked about them freely, with the sense of safety a person feels around their cat. (page 567)

Ha! Here I was thinking I was the only one who told my pets my secrets.

Even the biggest tigers grow old, Hilo had once said. But even the oldest tiger was still a tiger. (page 663)

The #1 lesson I learned from these books is that you should never let your enemies live. Ha!